


I Can't

by Camerahead12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Angst, Giving Up, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Not Happy, Sadness, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 03:22:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18241358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camerahead12/pseuds/Camerahead12
Summary: Every day since he was fifteen Dean Winchester had fought. He always believed things would get better- they had to, right?But what if after almost two decades, they just keep getting worse?





	I Can't

**Author's Note:**

> I believe writing out your feelings is a good form of expression. Sometimes it helps.

_I’m tired._

_Not like I need a good night’s rest without an alarm in the morning, tired. No, it’s more of a bone-weary tired. I’ve been fighting my whole damn life. Fighting to graduate high school. Fighting to have enough to eat, to pay rent- to fucking survive. Years I’ve been doing this bullshit. Right when you think you can get ahead, you get thrown down a few more pegs just because they can._

_I can’t do it anymore._

_It’s not like it’s too hard, and I just need to give it a bit more time to straighten out, no. I know what the hard life is. I’ve been fucking living it since I was fifteen. I know what heartache is. I know what pain is. Not just pain you feel when you get a scratch. It’s pain that eats away at you. Pieces of yourself slowly chipped away, little by little. Sometimes it hurts more than others, but that pain never goes away. It dulls a little, until another chunk is ripped away and the somewhat healed wound is open and raw again._

_I know what losing is. I’ve lost more people I love than I’d like to do into detail about. All of these people lost in different ways. I know what it’s like to have your name drug through the mud. Sometimes you fight to try and get it redeemed. Sometimes it just isn’t worth it. Most of the time it isn’t even something you did. It just is._

_You think that maybe you fucked up somewhere along the line. Maybe it was a mirror you broke back when you were a kid and those seven years just haven’t finished yet. Maybe it’s because you stole that guys parking spot because you will really rushed that day. Karma keeps kicking you. You keep swimming, seeing land in the distance, but the current is too strong and it keeps dragging you under._

_I’ve been drowning a long time. I’m just sick of fighting the losing battle._

_I am thirty fucking years old and thought I came so far, but I am literally that fuck up of a person my family reluctantly acknowledges, though they wish they could completely disown my existence. I haven’t made any type of name for myself. Anything I thought I’ve accomplished any other Joe can come in and do just as good, if not better. I am a shit parent. I hold no real purpose except just to try and keep waking up and fighting every day._

_I am so fucking tired of just being._

_My body hurts all the way down to the bones. A deep, penetrating hurt that isn’t actually from anything. My life is a constant drama filled, sob story that everyone is sick of hearing about. I am not strong by continuing to live it. I am in no way a better person for “surviving”. My soul is tired._

_I’ve thought about Death before. If I can be honest, it terrifies me. The thought of what comes after. If you think long enough about it, your own mind will drive you mad. Heaven? Hell? Nothing? Can you imagine Nothing? A forever blackness and just not existing anymore? It’s unnerving. It makes my stomach churn, and palms start to sweat._

_But I’m tired._

_I use to think there was something better waiting for me. Some sort of light after all this shit I’ve been through. I mean, you hear about people paying their dues and getting something good, right? Well, where’s mine? Is it so selfish to just want to stop hurting? To just have a little bit of peace? To know that I can wake up tomorrow and not have to worry about anything? Just for a moment, that’s all I’m asking. It’s all I’ve ever asked._

_I just want peace._

_Some people have it worse, I know. Some people have it so bad my life looks like a great big ball of beaming sunlight. Maybe they’re a lot more stronger than I am. They deserve it, I’m sure._

_Don’t give me the “it gets better” bullshit. I’m sick of fucking hear it. Don’t give me the “just give it time” speech. I can’t fucking take it anymore, and I am sick of being tossed down to be made out that I am some worthless piece of shit who has to push myself into exhaustion every day just so I’m not ridiculed._

_I’m fucking done. I know, without a doubt, everything will be better without me here._

 

  “Time’s up, Dean.” Benny says closing the laptop.

  Dean moves his fingers just before the screen closes on his fingertips laying them gently in his lap. He glances up at his therapists face before going back and staring at his scabbed skin peeling around his fingernails.

  “Do you feel any better writing some of your feelings out?” The man asks sitting back down in his outdated computer chair.

  Dean shrugs and starts to pick at a piece of loose skin by his finger. “Would it make you feel better if I said yes?”

  Benny sighs runs a hand through his shorthair. “Doesn’t matter what I want, cher. It matters what you want to get out of this.”

  He manages to grab the piece of skin with his thumb and index finger, and painfully pulls it until it comes off, bright red blood beading up immediately. Dean glances at Benny to see if he notices, and quickly tucks his bleeding thumb in a fist to hide it.

  “You actually waste your time reading my stupid rants?” Dean asks staring at anything in the room but the man.

  “What makes you think they’re stupid? Maybe they’re the most insightful thing I’ve ever read.”

  He snorts and opens his fist a little bit to see how bad the damage is. His fingers pull away from the blood in a somewhat sticky sound. Dean quickly closes his fist tightly again, ignoring the sharp sting of pain shooting from his thumb.

  “So you told me about work and Lisa taking you back to court. All of those are huge, unexpected things. Did writing about them seem to help?” Benny asks again, writing something down on a notepad.

  Dean shrugs and stares out his therapist’s window that faces the brick building of another office. “Yeah? No? Maybe?” He sighs and stands up. “I feel the same, I guess.”

  “Maybe we can try-“

  “Look, I appreciate you trying to help me work this one out, but seriously Benny, it’s been how many years? It doesn’t ever get better. Same shit, just a different day.” He grabs his leather jacket and pushes his balled up fist through first, then shrugs on the other arm.

  “Dean, it _will_ get better.” Benny says, slowly standing up beside him. “It can’t rain all the time.”

  Dean chuckles as he pulls on his beanie. “Stealing lines from The Crow now?”

  “You’ve been through a lot in your life, I’m not saying you haven’t. I, for one, know how much hell you’ve dealt with on a personal level, but I am being serious when I tell you that it will get better.” Benny reaches out and squeezes his shoulder tightly. “Dean, there is an ending to all this bullshit. You just gotta wade through it a bit longer. I promise you it will be okay.”

  Dean shrugs off the arm and grins back at him. “Always the optimist.”

  “Same time next week?” Benny asks giving him a slip of paper.

  “And call if I need anything. I know.” Dean takes the paper and opens the door, giving Benny a two finger salute.

  He walks down the hallway towards the receptionist. Dean nods to the woman as he passes; stuffing the pink paper Benny gave him to get his next appointment deep in his pocket. He won’t need it. She doesn’t even look up as he passes, pausing for a moment to let a woman and her screaming toddler pass through the doorway. Dean steps out into the parking lot, walking quickly to his car.

  When he sits down, he quickly cracks the window and lights up a cigarette. The smoke tickles his throat as he inhales. He lets it out slowly, watching the grey smoke twist and dance out the crack of his window into the wind. Dean chuckles as he remembers how his mother gives him crap about his terrible habit. How she swears that smoking will be the thing to do him in.

  He starts his car, throwing on his seatbelt out of habit. Dean pulls out onto the highway going back into town, taking another heavy hit on his cigarette. The sound of the wind rushing past his cracked window, and the tires on the cement isn’t loud enough to drown out his thoughts, but somehow the thought of turning on the music right now makes his anxiety pulse.

  It’s too much. Everything is just too much.

  Right before the speed limit sign to signal the town’s closeness, Dean swallows down the sudden urge to jerk his car off the road and into the ditch. The urge grows, expanding into a climax, and he bites his lip hard as he envisions the whole thing. His bones cracking, neck twisting, car flipping, glass shattering and becoming embedded in his skin-Dean shivers and shakes his head refocusing on the road.

  No, he might survive that. He has to go out to where he knows he won’t come back.

  Dean flicks his cigarette out the window just as he pulls into town. He takes the next four blocks on autopilot, completely lost in thinking about what he wrote in therapy. By the time he pulls into his driveway, a certain calm has surrounded him.

  His apartment is cold when he walks in, kicking off his shoes. He can’t remember if he turned the heat back up from yesterday or not. He guesses it really doesn’t matter either way. Dean walks over to the cabinet by the stove, and opens it up grabbing his dusty bottle of whiskey from inside.

  Dean stares at the amber liquid almost glowing slightly in the last rays of sunlight through the kitchen window. He rubs his thumb over the dust on the label, chewing on his lip trying to talk himself out of his own mind.

  “Fuck it.” He mumbles, twisting the cap and breaking the seal.

  The first swallow is just how he remembers it. The burn is like an old friend, and he coughs slightly, smirking at how familiar the heat feels in his stomach. The next drink goes down a bit smoother. Before he knows it, half the bottle is gone, and the light from dusk has long since faded.

  Dean debates his options. He glances to the medicine cabinet above his fridge. He’s been down that road before, and remembers the ipecac, and would rather not repeat that. He takes another swig, now staring at the top of the fridge. He knows what’s up there. He put it there himself. He could do it right this time. He has enough alcohol flooding his system to make his blood thin enough to bleed out easily. No one would think to even check up on him for a few days. They’d think he was just being “dramatic”, or "demanding attention".

  Dean reaches up and grabs for the clear case holding five brand new razorblades. He lets out a giggle as he squints at them, turning them in his hand. It’s so…high school. What is the word they say nowadays? Emo? Dean giggles again, taking another drink from his bottle, eyes never leaving the blades inside.

  He imagines what everyone will say (what little people will gather for his funeral). They won’t be full of the usual sadness and good memories, no. They will be full of judgement and condescending remarks. “It was only a matter of time”, or “he always did this type of thing for attention”. 

  Dean blinks a few times, eyes adjusting to the darkness around him as he tries to get his bearings. His feet seem to have taken him into his living room, and the slight crack in the curtain is letting in the orange streetlight. Dean glances at the wall beside him, gritting his teeth as his eyes rest on a pair of bright blue eyes staring back at him.

  His knees seem to have long lost their will to hold him upright anymore, and he drops with a loud thump onto the linoleum floor. Dean’s hand opens and closes on nothing, and he wonders briefly when or where he dropped his bottle. He know his other hand is still tightly holding onto the case of blades, because the corners dig into his hand. Dean uncurls his fingers slowly, breaking his gaze away from the boy in the picture hanging on his wall.

  The blade comes out smoothly, because that is it purpose and how it was created to happen. Dean blinks at it, letting the weightlessness of it try and mean something. A car passes, the headlights passing over the wall, illuminating the pictures of his long, lost, blue eyed boy brightly.

  Dean doesn’t register it at first. He’s vaguely aware something is tickling down his arm, but isn’t why, after he swats it, the tickling doesn’t stop. He hand feels sticky, warm, and wet. Dean tries not to think too much about it. He looks back up at the wall of pictures, and smiles back at the picture of the dark haired boy with his daughter’s hat balanced on his head. His gummy smiles makes Dean smile back.

  This time he recognizes something like a throbbing. Dean glances down and sees nothing but a puddle of darkness surrounding him. He tries to wiggle his fingers, but they don’t seem to want to work. He looks back up to the wall and smiles at the picture of his best friend hugging his daughter on her birthday two years ago.

  Dean’s head lolls to the side as he tries to see look down and see what kind of state he’s in. He doesn’t want it to be like last time, years ago, when they stapled his wrist back together. He knows the correct way the cuts need to go this time. This time he wants it to stick. This time he doesn’t want to be saved.

  He manages to roll his head forward again, squinting his eyes trying to make out the stilled images on the wall. He hears another car pass, and the headlights flash by too quickly over the photos. Dean’s vision starts to spin, and he thinks closing them a few minutes until he can get his world to still will be okay. The pictures will still be there. 

  The clock on his wall ticks loudly, signaling the passing seconds. Try as he might, his eyelids refuse to open, and panic sets in, despite the alcohol trying to calm him. Dean feels wetness trickling out of his closed eyes, and he lets out a frustrated whimper. He only meant to close them for a moment. If he knew this would be his last chance seeing those unearthly blue eyes, he would have concentrated harder, memorizing every wrinkle his eyes mad, the depth of his eyes, the wildness of his hair.

  The ticking of the clock is getting further and further away, and he is somewhat sure oxygen is optional at this point. Everything from his neck down seems to be a tingly numb, and his thoughts are slow to form. It’s almost peaceful. It is almost as if Dean is finally consciously aware of what falling asleep feels like. This most definitely would be it.

  Dean shutters in a weak breath, as the last tingles of coldness finally reach and succumb his face. He feels a tear slip from his closed eye, and trickle down his face. He exhales long and slow, letting go of any and all fight he has left. As his mind shuts down, the last thought he has is wondering if Cas is waiting for him in Nothingness.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and Comments give me a high! Let me know what you think. ^_^


End file.
